Oregon Nuclear Reactor Goes Gentle (Very) Into the Night

Published: August 7, 1999

RAINIER, Ore., Aug. 6—
Entombed in concrete and six-inch-thick steel, the radioactive reactor of the largest American nuclear power plant ever to be shut down was loaded onto a barge today for a 270-mile river journey right through the heart of metropolitan Portland.

It is the first time a commercial reactor of this size, and level of contamination, has passed through a major American city, said officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency overseeing the shutdown of the Trojan Nuclear Plant.

The move worries environmentalists. Lloyd Marbet, who led three unsuccessful ballot initiatives to shut the plant down before a deteriorating steam generator ultimately forced the decision, said, ''I'm not saying if the reactor falls off into the water, everybody would have to be evacuated from Portland, but it would not be good for the Columbia River to have a reactor vessel sitting in it.''

''The fact of the matter,'' Mr. Marbet said, ''is that the interior of the vessel contains a very high level of radioactivity.''

Moving the Trojan reactor, which weighs 1,000 tons, is contentious because environmentalists had urged the power company, Portland General Electric, to mothball the entire site for at least 50 years and wait for the radioactive isotopes to cool before dismantling the plant.

The company opted to move the reactor first by barge and then by truck from its site 42 miles northwest of Portland on the banks of the Columbia River to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in south-central Washington. There, it will be buried 45 feet deep.

The huge, dumbbell-shaped reactor, encased in blue plastic, was loaded onto the barge this morning.

A tug was scheduled to push off from the quay tonight and take the barge past Portland by early Saturday morning. It will continue upstream until it reaches the port of Benton, Wash., on Sunday. From there, two trucks will creep along at 5 miles per hour, pulling the vessel on a 320-wheel, 16-axle trailer to Hanford, 30 miles away.

Utility officials said moving the leakproof reactor by barge was the safest way to dismantle the plant, which for 16 years generated enough electricity to power all of Portland. It was closed in 1993, two decades earlier than planned.

A spokesman for Portland General Electric, Kregg Arntson, said, ''I would characterize it as a risky move, but it's a lot safer than the traditional method of cutting the reactor into pieces and trucking it over the highway.''

Mr. Arntson said that once the vessel was in concrete, it posed little risk to the workers handling it or to residents along the river. He said that a person standing within six feet of the reactor for an hour received no more radiation than an airplane passenger would get from the sun while flying round-trip between Portland and New York.

Trojan was plagued by glitches, including a faulty safety system that drew Federal fines in 1989, the accidental release of radioactive gases in 1992 and cracked steam tubes that forced the plant's shutdown the following year.

Photos: Workers secured the reactor to a barge yesterday in preparation for its 270-mile trip last night on the Columbia River for burial in Washington. The dumbbell-shaped Trojan nuclear reactor being loaded onto a barge yesterday morning. The reactor's cooling tower stands in the background. (Photographs by Don Ryan/Associated Press)